TWS Arctic Landscape Boundary Identification
2022-01-04
Landscape conservation at TWS
In 2020, The Wilderness Society started shifting the way we work toward a vision of a nationwide network of resilient landscapes as the means of achieving our new strategic framework and collective impact results.
The goal of this shift in approach is to sustain human flourishing, biological diversity, and natural ecological processes over long periods of time.
To do this, we are changing our:
- Geographic focus from individual parcels to whole landscapes
- Perspective from federal public lands to integrated multi-owner ecosystems
- Approach from enlisting support for an already established agenda to shared decision-making and collaboration with communities
As John Jarvis, former director of the National Park Service, described it:
Climate change, along with other stressors, has forced a reconsideration of the current model of protected area management to one of large landscape integration. Learning to manage at the landscape scale, with parks or equivalent protected areas linked with corridors and integrated with communities, transportation systems, local people, watersheds, agriculture, and sustainable economies, is a critical component to the future of conservation.
For more information about TWS’ approach to landscape conservation, see the resources in this Dropbox folder.
Defining the Arctic landscape
As TWS makes the shift to landscape conservation, it is important to be clear about which areas are covered by each priority landscape. While some actions may take place outside of the official landscape boundaries, we expect most efforts will be contained by the landscape extent. It is thus important to be clear how we are defining each landscape.
While the Arctic landscape was identified as one of the TWS priority landscapes, it was not part of the same process of selection by Landscape Review Teams that other landscapes underwent. As a result, no formal definition of the landscape boundary was ever established.
This document presents a starting point to stimulate thinking about how the Arctic landscape could be defined. It describes multiple options and provides interactive data to help the Arctic team explore differences between possible boundaries. These options are not meant to be an exhaustive set of possibilities, but rather to present a possible set of options that can further the Arctic team’s thinking around selecting a boundary for the Arctic Landscape. In the words of TWS Senior Science Director Greg Aplet, whatever boundary we choose, “the most important thing is that the boundary reflects an ecosystem of sufficient size to sustain its contents.”
Five potential options are described:
- Arctic ecoregions
- Traditional Indigenous homelands
- Caribou ranges
- Arctic Research and Policy Act boundary
- Intersection of Indigenous homelands and caribou range
We first provide an overview of each option, before offering interactive tools for exploring tradeoffs.
Option 1: Ecoregions
As a starting point for identifying the priority landscapes for the Lower 48, the TWS landscape team used ecoregions. These are areas that typically have similar environmental conditions, in terms of climate, soils, ecosystems, species, etc.
As the map below demonstrates, Alaska contains 20 “level 3” ecoregions. Data from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Selecting 6 arctic ecoregions with similar features yields a boundary covering 123,302,462 acres.
It should be noted, that while ecoregions formed the starting point for priority landscape identification in the Lower 48, other considerations went into selection of the final priority landscape boundaries. As the map below displays, use of arctic ecoregions would encapsulate all of the NPR-A, but only the northern portions of the Arctic Refuge. It encapsulates all of the Colville watershed and the vast majority of subsistence harvest areas used by many North Slope communities.1 The arctic ecoregions include many, but not all partner communities. Efforts relating to the Ambler Road and to caribou migration and wintering range would fall largely outside of this boundary.
Option 2: Traditional Indigenous homelands
Indigenous people have long stewarded the lands, waters, and species of what is now called Alaska. These peoples maintain rich cultural and spiritual connections to the land and its inhabitants. In recognition of this stewardship and connections, as well as the importance of human flourishing to effective landscape conservation, one possibility for defining the landscape boundary is to use the boundary of traditional Indigenous homelands.
The map below displays traditional homelands of the Iñupiat and Gwich’in people, based on data from Native Land Digital.
Combining both homelands yields a boundary covering 125,778,696 acres.
Use of this boundary for the Arctic landscape would capture all of TWS’ work in the NPR-A and Arctic Refuge and would include main partner communities. Efforts relating to the Ambler Road would fall partially outside of this boundary.
Option 3: Caribou herd ranges
Four caribou herds calve in northern Alaska: the Western Arctic Herd (WAH), Teshekpuk Caribou Herd (TCH), Central Arctic Herd (CAH), and Porcupine Caribou Herd (PCH). These caribou are central to culture, food security and the well-being of Indigenous people across northern Alaska. They also play a variety of important ecological roles.
Defining the Arctic Landscape boundary based on caribou herd ranges would represent a functionally based landscape definition. This is not intended to indicate that caribou are the only important species in the region. Rather, caribou are a convenient option for a land-based species that covers broad areas and thus encompasses many other important species and habitats in a way unparalleled by most other Arctic species.
As the table below shows, these herds cover large areas. This brings them into contact with many communities and protected areas.
| Herd | Area (acres) |
|---|---|
| WAH | 78,981,238 |
| TCH | 29,822,523 |
| CAH | 30,481,661 |
| PCH | 69,764,240 |
| Total | 127,845,586 |
Using the combined caribou range area to define the Arctic landscape would help ensure that we are working in a functionally intact landscape that is large enough to sustain its contents. It would also cover many of the TWS priority areas and encapsulate most of our partner communities. Furthermore, this scale coincides with the scale of subsistence harvest areas used by many North Slope communities.
Option 4: ARPA boundary
The US Arctic Research and Policy Act (ARPA) of 1984 was intended to create a coomprehensive national policy for Arctic research needs and objectives. Section 112 of ARPA provides the following definition of the Arctic: “the term ‘Arctic’ means all United States and foreign territory north of the Arctic Circle and all United States territory north and west of the boundary formed by the Porcupine, Yukon, and Kuskokwim Rivers; all contiguous seas, including the Arctic Ocean and the Beaufort, Bering and Chukchi Seas; and the Aleutian chain.”
The map below displays the portions of Alaska contained within this boundary. Note that this definition also includes extensive offshore areas.
The terrestrial portion of the APRA boundary covers a total of 169,438,513 acres in Alaska.
Use of this boundary for the Arctic landscape would capture all of TWS’ work in the NPR-A and Arctic Refuge and would include main partner communities. Efforts relating to the Ambler Road would fall entirely within this boundary. However, this boundary would also extend far south of areas typically covered by TWS work in Alaska, including the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Aleutian Islands.
Option 5: Overlap of Indigenous homelands and caribou ranges
This boundary combines options 2 and 3 to yield the outer bounds of the Indigenous homelands and the caribou ranges as the landscape boundary.
There are several benefits to this approach, which would:
- Convey the importance of centering Indigenous people
- Ensure we do not artificially cut off the boundaries of key cultural and subsistence species that we study, recognizing the need for full life-cycle protections and aligning with the scientific work that we do
- Make sure we capture most of the relevant areas and partners where we work currently and are likely to work in the future
Such a boundary would include areas where we do not currently focus as much of our work, like the Seward Peninsula, but just because such areas are within the boundary it does not necessarily mean they must be a focus of our work. Their inclusion does, however, leave open opportunities to build relationships and increase local support as we step more fully into an Arctic landscape strategy that extends beyond federal protected areas.
Alaska office staff also suggested including the surrounding oceans in the landscape. This inclusion is not visualized in the maps or acreages below, but we may consider how we can depict marine areas in our mapping of the Arctic Landscape to recognize the importance of marine areas and species for our Alaska Native partners and for protecting full life cycles of anadromous fish and other species.
Combining traditional Indigenous homelands and caribou ranges yields a boundary covering 136,665,570 acres.
Use of this boundary for the Arctic landscape would capture all of TWS’ work in the NPR-A and Arctic Refuge and would include main partner communities and efforts relating to the Ambler Road.
Summary
Summary table
The table below summarizes data for each of the three options.
| Option | Total area (acres) | Communities included | WACH WG communities included | Key partners included | Ambler road percent included | Colville watershed percent included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecoregions | 123,302,462 | 74 | 23 | 3 | 1 | 100 |
| Indigenous homelands | 125,778,696 | 42 | 27 | 5 | 75 | 100 |
| Caribou ranges | 127,845,586 | 35 | 25 | 5 | 100 | 100 |
| ARPA boundary | 169,438,513 | 115 | 39 | 5 | 100 | 100 |
| Combined 2+3 | 136,665,570 | 51 | 34 | 5 | 100 | 100 |
The number of communities included in each option is a slight underestimate, as differences between datasets lead some communities (e.g., Point Hope) to lie slightly outside of boundaries and thus to not be counted. Nonetheless, biases are the same across each option and thus the numbers above still reflect relative patterns.
There are 41 communities in northwest Alaska represented on the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group (WACH WG). The number above reflects how many of these 41 are included in each option.
“Key” partner communities were subjectively identified as those groups with which TWS has worked most in the past and include:
- Arctic Village
- Kaktovik
- Nuiqsut
- Utqiaġvik
- Venetie
As with the WACH WG list, the number above indicates how many of those key partners are included in each option.
The Ambler Road and Colville River watershed columns indicate the percentage of the length or area, respectively, falling within the option boundary.
Interactive map
To enable better exploration of the boundary options, check out the interactive map below by clicking, panning, and zooming.
The three options described above are depicted in the map as follows:
- Option 1 - Arctic ecoregion
- Option 2 - Indigenous homelands
- Option 3 - Caribou range
- Option 4 - ARPA boundary
- Option 5 - Options 2+3
Each of these can be turned off or on using the buttons in the menu at top left. Click the button with the three stacked grey squares to reveal this menu.
Other data also can be turned on and off to aid in data exploration. Alaskan communities (turned off by default) are initially displayed as large circles with the color and number indicating the aggregated number of communities in a given area. Zooming in to finer scales will distribute the community locations until city- or village-specific points become visible.
The menu can also be used to select between three different basemaps:
Esri.WorldTopooffers terrain features as well as various human features.Esri.WorldImagerydisplays a digital photo, for a snapshot of ground conditions.OpenStreetMapprovides road and human feature information, as well as selected natural features.